“Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States. We are dedicated to supporting cultural diversity and increased understanding among peoples through the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of sound. We believe that musical and cultural diversity contributes to the vitality and quality of life throughout the world. Through the dissemination of audio recordings and educational materials we seek to strengthen people's engagement with their own cultural heritage and to enhance their awareness and appreciation of the cultural heritage of others. Our mission is the legacy of Moses Asch, who founded Folkways Records in 1948 to document "people's music," spoken word, instruction, and sounds from around the world. The Smithsonian acquired Folkways from the Asch estate in 1987, and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings has continued the Folkways commitment to cultural diversity, education, increased understanding, and lively engagement with the world of sound.”

“There are hundreds of printed and manuscript books of music for plucked-string instruments from the late fifteenth century through the end of the eighteenth century. Most of these sources were written for the lute or guitar; there were also a few books for lesser-known plucked string instruments: the vihuela, cittern, bandora, mandora, and orpharion, as well as instruments related to the lute such as the arch-lute and theorbo. This site concentrates primarily on sources that employ a notational system called "tablature." Sources which can be played on these instruments but are in standard notation (such as those calling for continuo accompaniment) are not generally included.

The list contains basic bibliographical information for as many of these tablatures as I can find. Sources used include various volumes in the Répertoire international des sources musicales (RISM) series, the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2000), and Howard Mayer Brown's Instrumental Music Printed before 1600: A Bibliography (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1965). A variety of other sources were used as well, cited in the bibliographies for each entry, and new sources have come to light since the publication of the core bibliographic works.

This remains a work-in-progress, but I felt the inclusion of manuscripts and materials outside the sixteenth century was important enough to warrant a basic list, however incomplete. I currently have a list of prints and manuscripts from the late fifteenth century to 1800 (the RISM series cutoff) and will be completing information for this list and adding it to the page over the next few weeks. Detailed information on the tablatures will only be available from the sources I have studied either first-hand or from copies and will thus take much, much longer (I am beginning with the tablatures c1500).

“John Playford published a new book called The English Dancing Master in London in 1651. This volume contained the figures and the tunes for 105 English country dances, the first printing of these group social dances that were to dominate Western ballrooms for the next 150 years. The book appeared at a time of great upheaval in England. Civil disorder and natural disasters forced city residents to seek refuge on remote country estates; expanding trade and emigrations to distant lands carried Englishmen far from their homeland. Both phenomena affected the social life of the upper classes for whom these dances were a satisfying vehicle for leisure time recreation.

Playford’s slim volume sold quickly and he issued a second edition with nine additional dances the next year. Two editions of a third appeared in 1657 and 1665. He dropped the term “English” in the second edition and thereafter the books were simply called The Dancing Master. The books evidently filled a real need in Englishmen's lives and copies were very likely carried or shipped to country homes and colonial outposts as soon as they appeared in Playford’s shop.

The series eventually grew to eighteen editions of the first volume (1651–1728), four of a second (1710–1728), and two of a third (1719?–1726?) and long out-lived its originator. The three volumes eventually encompassed 1,053 unique dances and their music. Many were copied from one edition to the next so that the entire contents, with duplicates, amounts to 6,217 dances, including 186 tunes without dances and 3 songs (Dunmore Kate, Mr. Lane's Magot, and The Quakers Dance).

For this publication every dance was reduced to a code enabling comparison with similar dances. The unique or “Ur” dances were identified and collected into a database where each dance’s printing history and other information is summarized and a facsimile of the dance and its music is included. The Index presents every item by title with links to the Ur Dance Index. The Title/Link takes the reader to a bibliography of the sources. Searches can be made on all text entries as well as on the dance coding to find instances of specific dance figures in juxtaposition with others.

I am grateful to the English Folk Dance and Song Society, the University of Glasgow, the British Library, the Library of Congress, the University of New Hampshire and the Country Dance and Song Society for permission to include images from editions of The Dancing Master in their collections. I am also particularly grateful to the University of New Hampshire and William Ross, Head, Milne Special Collections and Archives, for hosting this database on the University's servers for Internet access.

“Since its inception in 1983, The Opera Quarterly has earned the enthusiastic praise of opera lovers and scholars alike for its engagement within the field of opera studies. In 2005, David J. Levin, a dramaturg at various opera houses and critical theorist at the University of Chicago, assumed the executive editorship of The Opera Quarterly, with the goal of extending the journal’s reputation as a rigorous forum for all aspects of opera and operatic production. Under his stewardship, the journal is resituated squarely at the intersection of performance, theory, and history, with a purview encompassing
contemporary developments on the stage and in the academy.

We invite you to join those subscribers who have found The Opera Quarterly to be the definitive publication for anyone serious about opera. With a new objective, layout, and design, there is no better time to begin reading!
Abstracting and Indexing ServicesThe Opera Quarterly is covered by the following abstracting/indexing services:

“This site was designed... as a primary resource for the serious musician, institution and music lover. Our goal is to provide easy access to performing and study music editions as well as historical, biographical and theoretical monographs (books).

This site lists new book and music titles published world-wide since 1994, and we have also added information on recently published musicological and collected works editions.

We are the oldest established sheet music
and music book dealer
in the Western United States
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For both new and antiquarian material!

Is there a title you can't find? If there is a title you cannot find, please send us an email and we will locate it and advise you on current availability and price.

“A disclaimer note: This document raises some questions, but does not purport to answer them. This is not a musicological article, it is an essay based on its writer's historical sense and his sense of musical and visual aesthetics. It does not provide bibliography to the degree customary in mucicology, unless it is called for by some specific and IMPORTANT issue, and a number of details and nuance found in these pages are based on educated and perspicacious conjecture. This document is intended primarily for lutenists who might wish to acquaint themselves with Ukrainian music and culture in the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo and Biedermeier Eras, and bandurists, who might wish to gain some understanding of Ukrainian tradition of domestic music-making without commercialism and with some modicum of authenticity. Hopefully it would also hold sufficient interest for lay public as well, and we certainly hope that the MP3 files we provide as musical illustrations would by enjoyed universally. ..“

“The Web Library of Seventeenth-Century Music is a service offered by the Society of Seventeenth-Century Music to its members and to the musical community at large. It presents new editions of seventeenth-century compositions that have remained unpublished or that are not available commercially. WLSCM hopes to include editions of all types, from short lute and keyboard pieces to selections from (or even entire) operas and oratorios. When available, sound recordings of these works will accompany the editions.

Editions are selected and reviewed by an Editorial Board of specialists in seventeenth-century music. As such, WLSCM is pioneering the online publication of refereed (peer-reviewed) musical editions.WLSCM invites the submission of additional editions.“

“WorldCat is the world's largest network of library content and services. WorldCat libraries are dedicated to providing access to their resources on the Web, where most people start their search for information.“

"Welcome to EarlyGuitar.net! This page contains transcriptions for classical guitar (solo and duet) of a variety of renaissance and baroque music. The sheet music is available in pdf format, and midi files are available too. Enjoy!

All transcriptions by Dana Hawkes DiAnda unless otherwise noted. Please do not use any of the transcriptions commercially without my permission." ...

Maintained by Bradley Lehman, bpl@umich.edu
This is a group of web sites about harpsichords, clavichords, and similar stringed keyboard instruments before the modern piano. Member sites may be about the instruments, players, builders, repertoire, recordings, etc.
Participation and listing are free of charge; any relevant site approved by the maintainer is welcome in the ring.
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